The recent history of a property on Upper Drumcondra Road, Dublin 9, “exemplifies” the way in which affordable accommodation in north Dublin is being converted into emergency accommodation, according to Green Party councillor Janet Horner.
The property, two interconnected three-storey-over-basement buildings close to the Royal Canal, was for many years divided into several flats, in one of which Horner lived for a time as the buildings were owned by an elderly relative.
“The rent was between €250 and €300 a month, unheard of value these days, but that is what we were paying up to 2019,” she said. “Each apartment had a small kitchen and a livingroom. It was good value.”
The buildings were then sold, with the owner putting them on the market after getting all the residents to leave, as is standard practice.
RM Block
The property was bought and renovated by Brimwood, one of the companies in the McEnaney group, which has a turnover of approximately €100 million a year from providing emergency accommodation to homeless people, asylum seekers and people who have fled the war in Ukraine, usually in buildings acquired for that purpose. No mortgage was registered.
The Drumcondra property, when in flats, “was the kind of affordable, basic accommodation that people need, a start in life, when they can’t afford much,” said Horner.
However in recent years, by way of State funding for emergency accommodation, a significant number of older properties divided into flats like the Drumcondra Road property are being bought by private sector operators such as the McEnaney group, driven by the housing crisis, the growth in homelessness, people seeking international protection and the arrival of people fleeing the war in Ukraine.
“The transformation of the Gardiner Street area between 2017 and 2023 was very extensive, from tourism and residential areas to almost exclusively emergency accommodation. That is a very significant and very rapid change in many ways that will take an awful lot longer to change back,” said Horner.
Emergency accommodation for homeless people in Dublin is funded by Dublin City Council while emergency accommodation for asylum seekers and Ukrainians throughout the State is funded by central Government.
The two types of emergency accommodation are linked in that many asylum applicants end up seeking emergency homeless accommodation when they are granted leave to remain in Ireland.
Publicly available records indicate the private sector companies providing emergency accommodation in smaller Dublin buildings are particularly focused on properties in Dublin 1, but Dublin 2, 3, 7 and 9 also feature prominently.
Often the change in use of a former guest house or multi-unit residential property is accompanied by a request to the council for a section five declaration that the change in use is not material and not one for which planning permission is required. Most often these requests are successful, council records indicate.
The council granted such a section five exemption to Brimwood in respect of the Drumcondra Road property. However, for reasons that are unclear Brimwood also sought retention planning permission in respect of the property for the “change of use from a residential dwelling to residential accommodation for homeless individuals”.
Local residents objected, and when they were unsuccessful, appealed the council’s decision to An Bord Pleanála (ABP, now An Coimisiún Pleanála). The appellants complained that the property was clearly operating as a hostel and as such required planning permission.
A report drafted by ABP said Brimwood agreed a five-year contract with the council in May 2020 for the housing of up to 40 single males in the property, with staff on site 24/7 to manage the buildings, and food being provided.
The September 2022 report by senior ABP planning inspector Stephen Ward outlined how the property had 17 bedrooms, a kitchen, diningroom, shower room, WCs, office and utility room.
Brimwood, he noted, said it was not a hostel but rather residential accommodation for homeless people. The presence of staff did not constitute the provision of care – an important issue for planning reasons – the residents were provided with private beds, “and no bunk beds are used”, it said, according to Ward’s report.
About a fifth of the residents stayed for a year and a third for six months, the company said. “The property is more a typical house rather than a homeless hostel,” Ward summarised the company as saying.
During his visit, Ward “noted that several rooms had additional bedspaces compared to that shown on the plans” and “the vast majority of rooms are shared, including the use of bunk beds”.
One room, described as a storage room in the plans, “was in use as a bedroom accommodating several bedspaces”, he said. “I do not concur that the use is consistent with typical residential uses or a typical house as suggested by [Brimwood].”
Although the precise nature of the development was “difficult to define”, Ward decided it would best be classified as a hostel akin to “a residential club, a guest house, or a hostel (other than a hostel where care is provided)”. He found the accommodation was not of sufficient standard to be suitable for long-term accommodation for homeless people. ABP found in favour of the residents.
That was in June 2023. However, the building is still being used to provide emergency accommodation to homeless people.
This is because, according to the council, Brimwood can still rely on the earlier section five decision that the change of use was exempt from requiring planning permission.
“After a thorough assessment of all relevant information, the planning enforcement section determined that no material change of use had taken place, resulting in the closure of the enforcement file,” the council told The Irish Times.
A request for a comment from Brimwood was met with no response.
“We spent about €4,000 to €5,000,” said Antoinette Coll, one of the local residents who together funded their successful appeal.
“We are all shocked and dismayed [that nothing has changed]. Our understanding is that we would have to go for a judicial review next, but we couldn’t afford that.”
Horner said that, as a representative of the north inner city, she is deeply concerned about the concentration of emergency accommodation in the north city area.
“But I also recognise that it would be absolutely disastrous from a humanitarian perspective if deeply vulnerable people were to lose the emergency accommodation they have.”
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The intense pressure on the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) and the council is exacerbated, she said, by the fact that other local authorities often send homeless people to Dublin to seek accommodation.
The DRHE “are the responder not just for Dublin but really for the whole country because, time and again, other local authorities outsource problematic emergency homeless accommodation to Dublin”.
The history of the Drumcondra Road property exemplifies “a very unvirtuous circle where the availability of affordable accommodation is being converted into homeless accommodation and the very accommodation that might provide the stability that people need in life is disappearing”.
“Instead they are ending up in emergency accommodation which, everybody knows, is deeply damaging for people to be spending time in.”
In a 2020 letter to the council in relation to the Drumcondra Road property, the DRHE said it was meeting local residents but “it is not prudent or practical to initiate local consultation on projects like this one prior to us acquiring/leasing such properties”.
Controversy and division quickly develop and put the projects in jeopardy, it said, resulting in more homeless people ending up on Dublin’s streets.
The executive, the letter said, puts a strong emphasis on how accommodation facilities are managed and, as a result, the “level of complaints and problems after these facilities open and settle in, have been very low”.
“We were not anti-homeless people or anything like that,” Coll said. “We understand the emergency need. But council policy is supposed to be about phasing out the use of private providers [of emergency accommodation].”
The executive, Horner said, is trying hard not to open more emergency accommodation in the north city area, but is under great pressure.
“The homelessness crisis is far beyond their making, yet they are the responder not just for Dublin, but for the whole country.”
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